Fibrates News and Research

Clinicians should aim for comprehensive lipid control using lifestyle as a first step and tailoring treatment to patients. Lifestyle interventions, including stopping smoking, improving diet, exercising sufficiently and moderate alcohol consumption, should be the crucial first step for managing lipids in all patients.

Type 2 diabetes patients, who face higher risk of cardiovascular disease, often take a combination of medications designed to lower their LDL or "bad" cholesterol and triglyceride levels while raising their HDL or "good" cholesterol because doctors long have thought that taken together, the drugs offer protection from heart attacks and improve survival.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), driven by the global pandemics of obesity and diabetes, poses a daunting challenge to clinicians in the 21st century. Despite progress, there is still much to be done to improve the control of dyslipidaemia, a key risk factor.

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced changes to the prescribing information in the United States for the highest dose of simvastatin, 80 mg, and the use of simvastatin with certain other medicines.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today held an Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee to review the results of the ACCORD Lipid study as they relate to the use of fenofibric acid (sold as Trilipix in the United States) in combination with a statin in patients with mixed dyslipidemia and at high risk of heart disease.

Thiazolidinediones are a class of medications that are commonly prescribed to treat type-2 diabetes, while fibrates are a structurally-related class of medications that are prescribed to modulate lipid levels in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Although recent evidence suggests that the clinical benefit may be uncertain for fibrates, a class of drugs used for the treatment of high lipid levels, use of these drugs is common in the U.S. and Canada, with usage increasing steadily in the last decade in the U.S., especially for a brand-name fibrate product, according to a study in the March 23/30 issue of JAMA.

In a new investigational study of VYTORIN, the cholesterol-lowering medicine from Merck, VYTORIN 10/20 mg reduced the incidence of first major vascular events defined as non-fatal heart attacks or cardiac death, stroke or any revascularization procedure by a highly statistically significant 16.1 percent compared to placebo, Study of Heart and Renal Protection study involved more than 9,000 patients who, on average, had advanced or end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Metabolon, Inc., leaders in global metabolomics, biomarker discovery and biochemical analysis, announced today the grant of US Patent 7,807,138 entitled "Biomarkers of Metabolic Responses to Hepatic Drugs". The USPTO awarded the patent to Metabolon on October 5, 2010. This is the 13th patent issued to Metabolon and the second in its portfolio of biomarker patents.

The VA Maryland Health Care System participated in a landmark national study of more than 10,251 high-risk diabetic adults across the nation, testing if three complementary treatment strategies can reduce the high rate of heart disease and stroke associated with type 2 diabetes and if these treatment strategies can also slow the progression of eye disease associated with diabetes, the leading cause of blindness in working-age Americans.

Results were presented today on behalf of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute from ACCORD, a study in patients with diabetes that evaluated cardiovascular outcomes in three distinct studies – glycemic control, blood pressure control and lipid control.

Lowering blood pressure to normal levels - below currently recommended levels - did not significantly reduce the combined risk of fatal or nonfatal cardiovascular disease events in adults with type 2 diabetes who were at especially high risk for cardiovascular disease events, according to new results from the landmark Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) clinical trial.

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY), Kowa Company, Limited, and Kowa's U.S. subsidiary, Kowa Pharmaceuticals America, Inc., today announced that Lilly and Kowa Pharmaceuticals America have entered into a co-promotion agreement in the United States to commercialize LIVALO® (pitavastatin). Lilly and Kowa have also entered into a licensing agreement in Latin America. LIVALO is a statin approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August 2009 for the treatment of primary hyperlipidemia and mixed dyslipidemia.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee (EMDAC) today voted 12 yes, 4 no, and 1 abstention that AstraZeneca has established sufficient benefit to offset the observed risks to support the use of CRESTOR®

AstraZeneca today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved CRESTOR® (rosuvastatin calcium) for use in pediatric patients ages 10-17 with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) when diet therapy fails to reduce elevated cholesterol. HeFH, a genetic disease, is characterized by high LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol) and increased risk of early cardiovascular disease.

According to new research from the Monell Center and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, certain common herbicides and lipid-lowering fibrate drugs act in humans to block T1R3, a nutrient-sensing taste receptor also present in intestine and pancreas.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a substance in the liver that helps process fat and glucose. That substance is a component of the common food additive lecithin, and researchers speculate it may one day be possible to use lecithin products to control blood lipids and reduce risk for diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease using treatments delivered in food rather than medication.

Almost 90 per cent of the world's population will not have timely access to affordable supplies of vaccines and antiviral agents in the current influenza pandemic, but it is possible that inexpensive generic drugs that are readily available, even in developing countries, could save millions of lives.

It is important to keep in mind that nontuberculous mycobacteria are environmental, and so unlike mycobacterial tuberculosis, generally this is not a person to person transmitted disease. The organisms are found universally in water and soil and so most people are exposed on a daily basis.

Aging is the continuing process of such stress exposures, and with advancing age (normal aging), we must carry lots of senescent cells within our bodies. Senescent cells also often provide some ‘bad influences’ to surrounding healthy cells; such as chronic inflammation and tumorigenesis

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